‘What about your Dark Lady? The Rosaline? Destiny Meade, I see you’ve got here.’

‘I rather thought: Destiny. She’s cement from the eyes up but she gives a great impression of smouldering depths and really inexhaustible sex. She can produce what’s called for in any department as long as it’s put to her in basic English and very slowly. And she lives, by the way, with Marco.’

‘That might or might not be handy. And Ann H.?’

‘Oh, any sound unsympathetic actress with good attack,’ Peregrine said.

‘Like Gertie Bracey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Joan Hart’s a nice bit. I tell you who’d be good as Joan. Emily Dunne. You know? She’s been helping in our shop. You liked her in that TV show. She did some very nice Celias and Nerissas and Hermias at Stratford. Prick her down on your list.’

‘I shall. “See, with a blot I damn her”.’

‘The others seem to present no difficulty but the spirit sinks at an infant phenomenon.’

‘He dies before the end of Act I.’

‘Not a moment too soon. I am greatly perturbed by the vision of some stunted teenager acting its pants off.’

‘It’ll be called Gary, of course.’

‘Or Trevor.’

‘Never mind.’

‘Would you give me the designing of the show?’

‘Don’t be a bloody ass.’

‘It’d be fun,’ Jeremy said grinning at him, ‘face it: it would be fun.’

‘Don’t worry, it won’t happen. I have an instinct and I know it won’t. None of it: the glove, the theatre, the play. It’s all a sort of miasma. It won’t happen.’

Their post box slapped.

‘There you are. Fate knocking at the door,’ said Jeremy.

‘I don’t even wonder if it might be, now,’ Peregrine said. ‘However, out of sheer kindness I’ll get the letters.’

He went downstairs, collected the mail and found nothing for himself. He climbed up again slowly. As he opened the door, he said: ‘As I foretold you. No joy. All over. Like an insubstantial pageant faded. The mail is as dull as ditchwater and all for you. Oh, sorry!’

Jeremy was talking on the telephone.

He said: ‘Here he is, now. Would you wait a second?’

He held out the receiver with one hand over the mouthpiece.

‘Mr Greenslade,’ he said, ‘wishes to speak to you. Ducky – this is it.’

CHAPTER 3
Party

‘A year ago,’ Peregrine thought, ‘I stood in this very spot on a February morning. The sun came out and gilded the stage tower of the injured Dolphin and I lusted after it. I thought of Adolphus Ruby and wished I was like him possessed. And here I am again, as the Lord’s my judge, a little jumped-up Cinderella-man in Mr Ruby’s varnished boots.’

He looked at the restored caryatids, the bouncing cetaceans and their golden legend, and the immaculate white frontage and elegance of ironwork and he adored them all.